HI THERE!
Sometimes you have to brag a little. This photo of a red-eyed tree frog in Costa Rica was selected by Natural Habitat Adventures in their “Wildlife Photo of the Day” competition. I’ve entered photos in the past, but this is the first time I’ve won.
http://dailywildlifephoto.nathab.com/photos/4977-hi-there-04-06-2017.
Emerald Toucanet
With a few days remaining before I leave for a blissful two weeks of internet-free snowshoeing in the Canadian Rockies, I’ll add another post or two on my trip to Costa Rica. The big birds are easy to identify; the small stuff will take a lot longer.
The Toucan tribe is almost as colourful as the macaws, and we were fortunate to see several species. The Emerald Toucanet posed regally for us.
Emerals Toucanet
There’s nothing regal about the others.
Black-Mandibled Toucan
Although “Kill Bill” tried.
Keel-billed Toucan
But this fellow didn’t.
Collared aracari
For a regal-sounding name, nothing beats the Montezuma Oropendola. And he’s handsome enough to carry the name.
Montezuma Oropendola
And of course, we need a parrot.
Red-lored parrot
The remaining bird almost didn’t make it into this category; I think the red legs saved it.
Gray-necked Wood-Rail
I’ll give him one more chance to show off.
Gray-necked Wood-Rail
Flyover
Sometimes I get lucky. The macaws flew only once before retiring to the trees where it was cooler. I set my Lumix FZ1000 to 400 z00m, aimed skyward, fired a burst, and hoped. When I cropped the specks in the frame, I discovered that the camera had captured their magnificent flight.
Macaws are clowns. It’s impossible to take them seriously, but their beauty is impossible to ignore.
They hang around, looking silly.
Until they decide to fly.
We spent a long time with these birds, which are quite tame because they are raised and fed in this location.
A solemn pair?
No, they’re all goofy.
And a delight to photograph.
The bird we all hoped to see, of course, was the elusive quetzal. They hide deep in the trees, usually obscured by branches and almost always in a dark place. We were fortunate to see several and follow them until we managed to get some clear shots.
Sneaking up from behind.
The standard portrait.
But I prefer this one.
More to come from my trip to Costa Rica. There are big birds, small birds and a lot of creatures that aren’t birds, enough material for quite a few posts.
Trio. Oops! Quintet.
I promise to finish my blogs on the Firth River as soon as I return from two weeks of snowshoeing in the Canadian Rockies. But I just got back from an eight-day photo tour of Costa Rica and have to share some of the delights. A great many places have learned that by putting out a feeder or even hanging some flowers from a branch will attract hummingbirds and tourists. It would have been nice to capture the birds at random in the bush, but feeders make photography so much easier. Below are my favourites from three locations.
There’s room for everyone.
I could probably drink upside down if I tried.
A study in colour.
Attack from three sides.
Eye on the enemy.
I win.
Mackenzie Orchid
Most of the flowers I saw were old friends from the Rockies: death camas, potentilla, lousewort, asters, bog rosemary, and reindeer lichen. Lady slippers occur there as well, but the beautiful Mackenzie orchid (a version of Cypripedum guttatum) thrives only in the mist of Virginia Falls. At least I recognized it sufficiently to call it a lady slipper.
The following pretty bloom was a real puzzler.
Boschniakia rossica
I spent a long time searching the internet in vain for this one. Fortunately, one of our guides was a trained botanist and came to my rescue a few days ago. Its common name is northern groundcone, and it’s a parasite.
The final plant oddity isn’t really unusual; I just had not encountered it before. Plus, it wasn’t fully in bloom. This time, Ben Gadd’s wonderful Handbook of the Canadian Rockies provided the answer, as it usually does for anything in the Boreal forest.
Striped Coral Root. Corallorhiza striata
It’s another orchid. No leaves. It feeds on dead plant matter with a little help from fungal friends.
We didn’t see a lot of wildlife, but it was there.
Caribou tracks on a beach
A couple more sky pictures. The clouds were endlessly fascinating.
A sunny day with promise of showers later
Cloud mountains
And finally, here is what the Nahanni would look like today if the mountains had not risen up around it. It still has its curves and oxbows, but they are far less obvious as they flow through deep canyons.
Flat-land river
That’s all from the Nahanni. The next posts will deal with the rest of my summer holiday: Yellowknife and the Firth River.
Morning at The Gate
We prepare to enter Second Canyon under a clear sky. A group of canoeists had shared our site. They had a blue raft to carry baggage.
Second Canyon is sheer rock cliffs that dwarf our rafts, but there are gentler areas as well.
Cliffs of Second Canyon
Time to lean back and let the beauty take over.
We stop for lunch at Painted Rocks Canyon. Time for a short hike. Or not.
There are many ways to enjoy the river.
On past Headless Creek (ah, those wonderful Nahanni legends), Meilleur River, and Sheaf Creek, where R.M.Patterson built his cabin and spent the winter of 1929. If you haven’t read his book The Dangerous River, you’ve missed the best of Canadian nature writing.
We camped at Prairie Creek, a broad delta, flat and open, with nice tent sites. Next morning, I rose early, put the camera to work, and then sat down to describe the scene.
Early morning at Prairie Creek
Across the river, a dense lodgepole pine forest rises to rounded hills and behind them, the reddish brown mass of Tlogotcho Plateau. The wind and the river are quiet, the only sounds the chirping of birds, the soft talk of the guides preparing breakfast, and the ever-present whine of mosquitoes.
Prairie Creek camp
Shrubs, reeds or grass, shallow pools of still water, hard-packed damp sand, and beyond, a range of mountains.. Wispy clouds seem to promise a fair day, but on this river, sun and storm play hide and seek.
Sheltered tent site
To my right, a tent nestles among spindly poplars. It’s a perfect day for a nature hike, and we go in search of a wolf den. No luck with the wolves, but we see our first dall sheep. They’re too far away to photograph clearly, even with my 800mm digital lens. Predictably, storm clouds chase us back to camp.
The night was too warm for a good sleep, so I listened to the sprinkle of rain on the tent, one the most soothing sounds of camping. Mosquitoes bad in the morning. We load up and splash through George’s Riffle and into First Canyon.
George’s Riffle.
George Sibbeston was a trapper who capsized here. Our rafts scoffed at the tiny waves.
Bad weather came in quickly. What did First Canyon have in store for us?
Storm clouds
Next post: First Canyon and the end of our journey.
The view from Canmore
It was not a good morning for hiking. I ate a leisurely breakfast, read the Calgary Herald, and headed for the Vermillion Lakes as soon as the clouds began to break up. Aside from dawn or sunset, my favourite time to photograph the mountains is when there is a mix of blue sky and dramatic cloud.
I had to be patient, but there was beauty to capture at the lakes.
The gentle colours of September
Sunlight on grass
And then the summits began to reveal themselves.
Fresh snow
Like ghost ships on a sea of clouds
And almost as soon as the clouds began to lift, they were gone, replaced by a clear blue sky. Mt Rundle suddenly thrust its summits out of a thick layer of cloud. By the time I got the camera from its case, the cloud had dwindled to a narrow strip.
Mt Rundle.
I left the lakes and drove to the osprey nest at Castle Junction. One lone juvenile was there, waiting perhaps for his parents to him bring some food, even though he was fully fledged and now capable of looking after himself.
Home sweet home, but not for much longer. He was gone next morning.
Two hours of waiting brought nothing more exciting than a hop from one side of the nest to the other, and a few soft calls, so I headed for Lake Minnewanka in hopes of finding some sheep or elk. No luck. Aside from birds, the only wildlife I saw during my three days in the area consisted of small rodents.
It was too early for the aspens. Although a few had turned bright yellow, most of the groves were just beginning to change. September is a time of waiting and expectation.
End of summer
The canyons are separated by stretches where the mountains pull back from the river. They still block our view, but the valley is wider. Already we can see that the rock is softer and more prone to erosion.
Between Fourth and Third Canyons
The Nahanni is wide here and the sky big.
When we do come close to the rock, we see that it is quite different from Fourth Canyon.
How was this created?
A cliff trying to fall down.
The walls close in again.
Third Canyon
The Gate and the Pulpit
The Gate was our destination for the night. Our arrival was preceded by a thunderstorm that echoed and reverberated through the canyon, and accompanied by a downpour. When the rain showed no sign of stopping, our guides put up a tarp and we erected our tents underneath it before moving them to a site. Of course, as soon as all the tents were up, the rain ceased.
Virginia Falls, Nahanni River
Enough Shakespeare! I won’t be fighting the French at Agincourt; I’ll be in the North fighting mosquitoes on the Nahanni and Firth rivers. It’s time for another trip to my second home (the Canadian Rockies are my primary retreat from urban life). Two weeks on each river will see me through half of our short Alberta summer. I won’t be home until the first of August, and since our northern wilderness is still blissfully free of cell phone and Internet coverage, there will be no more blog entries until then.
These will be “soft” trips, northern style: rafts to carry everything and everyone, guides to row them, do the cooking and generally look after us, and lots of wildlife, fortunately, not all of the six-legged kind. My aging joints like “soft” trips; there would be a palace revolt if I suggested climbing Denali again. (That’s a much younger me in the photo at the top of the page!)
Since rafting the Firth costs about the same as a luxury safari in Botswana, you have to be a little crazy to sign up for the privilege of putting up your own tent every night, let alone do so more than once (this will be my third time on the Firth, second on the Nahanni). Still, I would not trade my life of adventure for all the material objects I could have purchased over the years but didn’t.
Ciao!
Burnside River in June, 2007
You booked the trip, paid your money (a lot!), scheduled your vacation. You have twelve days to raft the tundra, see the caribou migration and cross the Arctic Circle. Except, the ice is breaking up later than usual and you can’t move. So you sit on a rock, contemplating the rhythm of the river and your own insignificance. Be thankful for the lesson; it’s one that city dwellers never learn.
The Burnside eventually relented and let us complete our journey.
A Life of Adventure 